


The Darkest Place

by swiftishere



Series: MSA One-Shots [3]
Category: Mystery Skulls Animated
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Pre-Cave Incident, i never know if im using that tag right but oh well, is that a tag in this fandom bc it should be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 06:36:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20059639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swiftishere/pseuds/swiftishere
Summary: Maybe they'd bit off more than they could chew with this particular case. Maybe they're worried over nothing.(In the wake of their first real scare on a ghost hunt, everyone on the team quietly and separately questions themselves.)





	The Darkest Place

**Author's Note:**

> ...except mystery, who is too full of self-confidence, so he's not really here. 
> 
> title comes from thief by imagine dragons, which is also the song arthur's singing and, surprise surprise, kind of the song that inspired this whole thing.

If he stopped moving, stopped distracting himself, the feeling of rope around his wrists and a cold knife to the back of his neck came back. He had to rub his shoulders and throat to convince himself that he was fine, he was home and safe and nobody was coming after him. As long as he played his music at full volume and hummed along to it and kept himself busy drawing, his thoughts wouldn't stray back to the cold, smooth, hate-filled voice of the cultists as they described _what they were going to do to him_ –

Arthur jumped, feeling something like a hypnic jerk as a loud guitar started playing. The noise startled him out of the spiral, doing its job, and he ran a hand through his hair and glanced down at the paper in front of him – and stopped, a little unnerved by what was on it. Twisting spirals, in uncharacteristically shaky lines but unmistakable as _rope_.

_ Did he draw those without noticing?_

He hissed through his teeth and, with a quick glance around to see if anyone was watching, started erasing them. He forced himself to whisper along to the music, keeping time with the forceful strokes of the eraser.

"_If only you, you could see, the darkest place that you could be, oh maybe then you'd understand-_

_ from desert heat to cobbled streets, from broken home to the city beat, there's so much more than you could know,_

_ so take me back when I believed, back when I was unafraid just like a thi-i-ef,_

_ all the lives that I could lead, back when I was unafraid just like a_-"

He broke off into a frustrated half-yell when the eraser snapped off the pencil and went flying to land somewhere under his bed. No longer singing, he turned a frustrated glare to the now eraser-less pencil in his hand – and realized it was shaking. Not only that, his breathing had become uneven and he could feel something wet on his cheeks.

With the back of his hand, he wiped the tears off his face, growing increasingly irritated with how much this was messing with him. Nothing even _happened!_ He was safe and _fine_ and _nothing happened_, and yet he was still _crying_ because he got scared _hours ago_. Would _Vivi_ dwell on something this much? _Of course not_, she never got fazed by shit like this, and that thought wasn't helping in the slightest, it just made his stomach twist with guilt and frustration. 

He _knew _this day was coming, too. Maybe not this exactly, but something like it, for sure. The breaking point, the end of his luck. 

_His_ luck? Who was he kidding? His _friends _were the lucky ones, somehow managing to stay alive and well despite sticking their necks out for him over and over. Every time they got into danger, Vivi and Lewis stayed brave and strong, and he was the one who broke under pressure or was targeted by the monster of the week and had to be rescued, putting them in harm’s way in the process. If it wasn’t for him, they’d be able to go on every adventure they wanted. But when he was there, suddenly it became about protecting him. When he didn’t do _anything_, really, he was really just dead weight.

So why was he _there_?

* * *

Vivi couldn't sit down, couldn't stop pacing, couldn't stop waving her hands beside her face to try and release some of the panicked energy she was currently full of. She felt like the whole world was full of static, and it was making it hard to breathe.

It had been a couple _hours_ since they'd dropped Arthur off at home, and she was barely holding herself back from calling him to make sure he was still home and safe. She couldn't stop thinking, sick with residual fear, of the events of earlier today, from the moment she turned around to find Arthur no longer behind them to the fruitless search that only got them lost to hearing him _scream_ and _scream_ and _running, almost not quite fast enough_ –

..._deep breaths_, she reminded herself, slowing to a halt in front of her bed. Every part of her was still buzzing when Mystery walked into the room. He hopped up on the bed and she followed suit, pulling him close to her chest, trying to keep her breathing steady.

She couldn't let anyone know how freaked out she was by this. She was supposed to be their leader, confident and trustworthy and brave, and she'd already messed up enough today by letting Arthur get captured _and then almost didn't find him again_-

-nope, bad line of thought. She shook her head slightly to dispel it, and Mystery, maybe sensing how close she was to breaking down again, shifted around to lick her face.

She just needed some sleep and she’d be able to move on, forget about this whole disaster. And so would everyone else. It was _fine_.

But even lying there, fighting to get her mind onto _anything else,_ every line of thought led her back to the same place – guilty and scared. She had brought Arthur – _all her friends_ – right into danger, and almost got them _killed_.

Lewis hadn’t even been _mad_ at her, even though he’d lectured her about this very thing over and over. That should have been comforting, but it only made her feel worse. What did he think of her now? Was she irresponsible, reckless, just _stupid _-

Arthur and Lewis always seemed to know what to do. They thought things through, made plans and assessed risk and kept themselves safe. She might have _physically_ been the one leading them, but when it came to looking ahead and staying out of trouble, she was really hiding behind them.

So why was she _there_?

* * *

Lewis couldn’t sleep. He was panicked, and worried, but the main emotion swirling in his head was _guilt_. 

He was _supposed_ to be the one who protected the others. That was how it worked – Vivi was their leader, bold to the point of reckless, leading them right into danger, ever confident in herself to get them out; Arthur was scared of everywhere they went and kind to a fault and _perfect bait_ for every demon or monster that they happened to cross paths with, looking for food or a medium like him to use as a conduit or someone they could trick into working for them; and Lewis looked after them both, keeping them away from _real_ danger.

He’d failed. Arthur was actually _caught_, he hadn’t even _noticed_, and in the end it had been up to Vivi to save him. When Lewis was faced with that circle of people all after the same thing, a _body _they could use for their ritual, and he’d seen Arthur with that knife to the back of his neck, gagged and bound and crying, looking at him _pleading_-

-he’d just _frozen_. He wanted to do _something_, but fear rooted him in place as he imagined those knives turned on _him_, every idea he had shot down with a thousand images of everything that could go wrong. Vivi was the one who actually _moved_, while he was still busy _thinking_.

If he wasn’t the guardian, the one keeping everyone safe, what _was_ he?

_Did they even need him at all_?

The other two were good at acting under pressure. Vivi didn’t _need_ to check every avenue, every movement and consequence – she just trusted herself and _acted_ and she was amazing enough that it worked. And Arthur may have _seemed_ like a coward when he got spooked by something small, but when it came to real danger, he didn’t run or hide, he looked at things with lightning reflexes and did what he could. Lewis... couldn’t do that.

So why was he _there_?


End file.
